1069 



CICONIA. 



CICONIA. 



1070 



dwellings of man without fear. In Holland and Germany especially, 

 the bird is treated as a welcome guest, and there, as indeed elsewhere, 

 it annually returns to the nest which has cradled many generations, 

 on the steeple, on the turret, on the false chimney that the Hollander 

 has erected for its site, in the box, or on the platform which the 

 German has placed for its use. The stump of a decayed tree is some- 

 times chosen by the bird, and the nest is made of sticks and twigs, on 

 which are laid from three to five cream coloured or yellowish-white 

 eggs, about the size of those of a goose. The incubation continues 

 for a mouth, at the expiration of which period the young are hatched, 

 and carefully attended to by the parents until they are fully feathered 

 and able to procure food for themselves. Frogs, lizards, snakes, and 

 other reptiles, mice, moles, worms, insects, eels, the young of ducks 

 and other waterfowl occasionally, and even partridges, according to 

 M. Temmiuck, are devoured by these birds. In the continental towns 

 domesticated Storks, which have been taken from the nest when young, 

 may be often seen parading about the markets, where they are kept 

 as scavengers to clear the place of the entrails of fish and other offal, 

 which they do to the satisfaction of their employers. 



Geographical Distribution. The arrival of the Stork in Europe 

 takes place in the spring. In Seville it is very common ; but, accord- 

 ing to the Prince of Canino, it is very rare and only an accidental 

 visitor near Rome. Though so common in Holland, it very rarely 

 arrives in Britain. The general drainage of our marshes may have 

 something to do with this, but is hardly sufficient to account for so 

 striking a difference in the migratory distribution of the bird, more 

 especially as it proceeds to higher latitudes; for it regularly visits 

 Hweden and the north of Russia, and breeds there. The winter is 

 passed by the bird in the more genial climates of Asia, and in the 

 northern part of Africa, Egypt especially. Those who have seen 

 these birds in the act of migration, speak of their numbers as very 

 large : thus Belon remarks, that the Storks are never seen in flocks 

 except when they are in the air ; and he relates how, being at Abydos 

 in the mouth of August, a great flight of Storks came from the north, 

 und when they reached the commencement of the Mediterranean Sea 

 they there made many circuitous turns, and then dispersed into 

 smaller companies. When Dr. Shaw was journeying over Mount 

 1 he saw the annual migration of those which had quitted 



Egypt; and he states that each of the flocks was half a mile in 

 breadth, and occupied three hours in passing over. They have been 

 occasionally seen in considerable numbers in Great Britain, but the 

 instances in which they have been killed are few. 



Utility to man. -The utility of this bird to man in clearing away 

 noxious animals and filth has given it a claim to protection, that has 

 rendered it quite at its ease in his presence wherever that protection 

 has been afforded. 



<J. uiyra (A rdea niyra), the Black Stork, Ciogne Noir of the French. 

 Like the last this species is a migratory bird. It passes the winter in 

 the southern parts of Europe, and in spring advances to high northern 

 1 ititudes to spend the summer. Mr. Yarrell says that he can make 

 out only four authentic instances in which this bird has been shot in 

 nid. 



M. Temminck remarks that all those gigantic species of foreign 

 Storks arranged by systematists under the name of Mycteria, have the 

 same external characters with the European Storks, the same manners 

 mill the same habits, and he further refers to the fact that Illiger in 

 hi* ' Prodromus' has given his opinion that the genera Mycteria and 

 Ciconia ought to be united. 



Mr. Selby, after giving the characters of the genus Ciconia, says, 

 " My readers will observe that these generic characters are not 

 applicable to all the species of the genus Ciconia, of Bechstein, Cuvier, 

 Temminck, and Wagler, but only to that group of which C. alba may 

 be considered the type. The larger species, namely, C. Marabou, 

 Aryala, Mycteria, &c., seem to me possessed of characters sufficiently 

 distinct to warrant such a separation, a fact indeed admitted by the 

 necessity under which these authors have found themselves of sub- 

 dividing their genus into sections." 



Of these, the three gigantic species of Stork remarkable for the 

 comparative nakedness of the head and neck, a kind of pouch which 

 h:mg.< externally in front of the neck, and a sort of vesicular apparatus 

 or portion of akin at the back of the neck which can be inflated by 

 the bird, and the greater enlargement of the bill, deserve especial 

 notice. These extraordinary and uncouth-looking birds are natives 

 of Africa and the eastern parts of Asia, and have only been known to 

 modern naturalists within the last fifty or sixty years. 



Ives in hia voyage to India (1773) made known a gigantic grallatorial 

 bird, from which Dr. Latham described the Adjutant of the British 

 residents at Calcutta (the Argala of the natives), with the name of the 

 'fig.uitic Crane. At the same time he noticed the observations made 

 by Sineathman, the African traveller, on the habits of a bird seen by 

 the latter on the western coast of that quarter of the globe. Gmelin 

 upon thin information founded a species, Ardea dubia, and Latham, 

 who had figured the bird, and related some additional particulars of 

 its habits in the first supplement to his 'Synopsis' (1787), changed 

 the name in his 'Index Ornithologicus ' to Ardea Argala. Mr. Bennett, 

 who adverts to these points, proceeds thus : " Mr. Marsden, in his 

 ' History of Sumatra, 1 makes mention of a bird, called by the native.* 

 of that island Boorong-Cambing, or Boorong-Oolar, which was 



generally believed to be of the same species with the Adjutant of 

 Bengal. Dr. Horsfield however, in a paper published in the 13th 

 volume of the 'Linmean Transactions,' separates a Javanese bird, 

 which is probably the same with the Sumatran, as a distinct species. 

 Subsequently M. Temminck, in his ' Planches Colorizes,' has shown 

 that the African species differs in several essential particulars from 

 that of the continent of India, and still more remarkably from that 

 of Java and the neighbouring islands. By his figures of the three 

 species, all taken from living specimens, he has so clearly determined 

 their characters that it is scarcely possible they should ever again be 

 confounded. In one point however he has himself given rise to a 

 different kind of confusion, that of their nomenclature. They all 

 furnish, in more or less perfection, the beautiful plumes, superior in 

 estimation even to those of the ostrich, known by the name of Mara- 

 bous, from their appellation in Senegal. But those of the ludian 

 species being far superior to the others, M. Temminck has thought fit 

 to transfer to that bird the name of C. Marabou, and to rob it of its 

 native appellation, Argala, which he has bestowed upon the African. 

 The consequence of this perversion of their native names has been 

 such as might have been expected. In the latf edition of his ' Kegne 

 Animal,' M. Cuvier quotes the C. Marabou of Temminck, with the 

 characters of the Indian bird, as a native of Senegal ; while he states 

 the C. Argala of the same author, to which he attributes the characters 

 of the African species, to be brought from India. Nothing could 

 more strongly evince the necessity of restoring, as Mr. Vigors had 

 previously done, in the Appendix to Major Deuham's 'Travels in 

 Africa,' the name of Aryala to the Indian, and that of Marabou, to 

 the African species.'* 



C. Marabou, .Vigors. M. Temminck has clearly pointed out the 

 differences between this species and the Indian Argala. The African 



Bill of African Gigantic Stork (Cicuniu Marabou). 



Marabou is less in size than the Indian Aryala, the latter sometimes 

 reaching six or even seven feet in height, while the former seldom 

 exceeds five feet, even when the neck is elongated. The bill of the 

 Aryala is enlarged in the middle, the culmen of the upper mandible 

 and the edges of the lower form a curved line from the base to the 

 apex ; in the Mara- 

 bou the lines are 

 straight and the bill 

 is regularly conical ; 



the nostrils of the 



Indian bird are ovate, 

 those of the African 

 species are oblong. 

 The iris of the for- 

 mer approaches to 

 pure white ; that of 

 the latter is dull- 

 brown. The cervical 

 or sternal pouch 

 often hangs down 

 more than a foot in 

 the A ryala ; in the 

 Marabou, it is much 

 shorter. The back 

 and wings of the 

 Aryala are dull- 

 black ; in the Mara- 

 bou there is agreenish 

 tinge on the black of 

 the back, with the 

 exception of the 

 larger wing-coverts 

 and the secondaries, 

 which are of a more 

 decided black, edged 

 more or less broadly 

 and distinctly, ac- 

 cording to the age of 

 the individual, with African Gigantic Stork, or Crane (Ciconia Marabou}. 

 pure white bands. 



In the young birds these last distinctions are imperceptible. In both 

 species the bill is inclined to livid yellow in colour, and is more or less 

 spotted with black towards the base, as is the head, which is dusky. 

 When the bird is at rest the pouch as well as the neck are of a pale 

 flesh-colour, but when it is excited they acquire a redder tinge. These 

 parts are sparingly covered with a few scattered brownish hairs, most 



